Chapter 8
I don't like your tragic sighs,
As if your god has passed you by.
Well, hey fool, that's your deception.
Your angels speak with jilted tongues.
The serpent's tale has come undone.
You have no strength to squander.
~Sarah McLachlan~
The rain beat down relentlessly on the corrugated tin roof. In another life the endless greyness of this land would have reminded him of London, but now there was only a shadow of a memory left.
His old life was all but forgotten, diminished to a few echoes of speech, a faded image or two. When had that happened? Somewhere between losing his supplies when he fled the hotel in Prague and here, a backwater town in the hill country of Albania. He'd lost contact with the MI6 handler not long after the escape. The man was probably dead. He'd never even known his real name.
Yellowed fingers with ragged nails stubbed out the cigarette on the wall, familiar, yet still somehow a stranger's hands. He stared at them, trying to remember.
London.
He still had a map of her in there somewhere. In the back of his mind. He'd need it when he returned. If he ever returned. But for the time being there was only the taste of raw unfiltered tobacco and the knowledge that someone, someone in this pub knew where to find Baron Maupertuis.
It was one of those rustic, unlicensed dives you saw all over Eastern Europe, with a makeshift melamine bar and the pot of gjellë bubbling ominously on a brazier in the corner. He was sitting on one of the mismatched chairs, each one whitewashed to varying degrees of distress.
They didn't like strangers here, and this kept him on alert as he looked around.
"Më falni," he gestured to the plain girl acting as barmaid to bring food. He spoke in broken Albanian and wished, not for the first time, that his polyglot of a brother was here. Albanian was difficult to master, not having much in common with most modern languages. The girl brought some of the gjellë in a chipped bowl that looked like it had been looted from the Italians in 1941. She took way his glass. The thin stew was hot and sustaining, but not what anyone would call tasty. He thanked the powers that be that it did not contain any of the intestines or head of the animal as he wolfed it down. Pieces of capsicum and what looked like onions floated to the top.
He ran a hand through his mop of overgrown hair.
Over in the corner a weathered old man, a farmer, huddled over his own bowl of stew. The deep lines on his face said sixty but he couldn't have been more than forty-five. The exposure and the hardship did that to people around here. Someone once told him that soldier's faces change, starting out fresh and young and eager, and then draw out over the duration of their tour, until the stress and sand and sun leave the indelible mark of their experiences. Rougher skin. Deeper frowns, sadder eyes. So much death. He wondered if his own face had changed much under its stubble and dirt. The last eighteen months had taken a harsh toll on his body and his soul. Such a terrible, terrible price for freedom and the lives of those he cared about.
No, don't say that... Those he loved.
People who may never know what he'd done for them.
And the only thing that had kept him going on those lonely nights, huddled in foreign bus stations and under bridges, was the thought of a girl he once knew. Pretty and warm and kind and clever. And so, so brave. Someone who hadn't thought twice about risking everything to save his life, even if it turned out he wasn't everything she thought he was. Even if everyone else thought he was a fake, a charlatan. She'd believed in him when no-one else would. Tell me what's wrong, she'd said, tell me what you need.
Who was he that he deserved such kindness and trust, when all that he was, all that he'd done was stripped away?
You're wrong, you know, you do count, he'd told her, you've always counted and I've always trusted you. It was with a heavy heart that he'd left the safety of her home and set out on this mission. But that hadn't been the end of her involvement; he'd taken a piece of her with him. She'd never know that it was her image, the delightful eccentricity of her ways, and the faintly recalled scent of her neck as he leaned down to kiss her cheek, that had kept him alive all this time. She represented everything that was soft and comfortable and hopeful; the opposite of this God-forsaken place.
She was hope.
She was home.
One day, if he survived this piece of the puzzle, he would thank her properly.
He drained the last of the stew and pushed the bowl away, preparing to leave the table. The weathered old man caught his eye. He paid the barmaid with pick-pocketed coins, flicked the hood of the purloined rain-coat over his frizzy head, and made his move.
The rain had abated to little more than a blanket of drizzle. He was thankful for that small wonder, at least. The young boy walking the bicycle hadn't noticed him yet. That was surprising, seeing as his fatigue had stripped away any grace he might have once had in covert pursuit. He hung back, keeping to the shelter of the alleys between the roughly rendered houses, staggering occasionally, trying to appear intoxicated.
The boy's bicycle carried packages of groceries in its panniers, along with a delivery from the local pharmacy in a large paper bag.
He watched as the delivery boy carried on up the hill to the more affluent part of town. It was less of a road and more of a dirt track, really. Civilisation hadn't reached far into this part of the country; the legacy of communist rule. Above them a mountain pass disappeared into the mist.
When the boy turned a corner into a more open part of the street, he hung back even further, kicking a stray chicken out of the way to hide behind a sign and pulling the hood down even further over his face. They were approaching a row of mansions, out of keeping with the overall image of the town. They sprang up all over the Balkans when certain types of people saw fit to exploit the low position of their fellow men. Former warlords, money-lenders, people-traffickers, drug dealers, the scum of the earth. They profited from other people's misery and they built these palaces with the spoils.
The delivery boy turned into Maupertuis' drive and left the bike on the gravel. The shiny Mercedes van parked there was a harsh contrast with the dirt road and the general squalor of the farming community.
He found a hiding place on the other side of the street and waited for dusk.
"I've been waiting for you."
A blood-pressure monitor beeped steadily beside the bedridden old man, showing the intruder he was not afraid. The nurse-come-housekeeper was passed out in the kitchen from the sleeping pills he'd dissolved in her nightly tot of rakia. He's spiked the bottle before the delivery boy had even picked up the groceries. There was no-one else in the dark house to disturb them.
"You know who I am?" He approached the bed, coming out of the shadows. The room was spare, save for a cabinet to keep the medical supplies in and the commode chair. These men knew how to build these magnificent houses, yet they didn't know what to fill them with when they had them.
Absolutely no class.
"You are the ghost," came the old man's rasping breath, "the one who has been systematically dismantling our happy family." Maupertuis lifted a feeble, paper-thin hand from the covers.
Yes, he was a ghost. He didn't know who he was any more, not really. He was just an apparition that walked the earth, visiting justice upon the iniquitous, those who could not otherwise be touched. That's why they allowed him to do this mission. They knew he would be able to find those who hide because he knew how to hide. He knew how to forget himself and give himself wholly to the task at hand, even though it may cost him his life. Though it may cost him much more than his life.
"I know why you are here," Maupertuis continued, "but as you can see, I do not need an angel of death."
"Yes, indeed I am the angel of death, come to rain down fire on everything you've spent your life to build." His eyes flashed in the half light and his teeth bared in spite. "I will make it quick."
The old man started to cough and seize up in spasms. For a moment he thought his target would expire before he had the chance to finish it, but as he watched, Maupertuis put his hand to his curling mouth and squeezed a tear from one eye. He was not dying but laughing.
"There is no escape this time, Baron."
Maupertuis recovered from his fit. "May I at least know the name of my assassin, before he dispatches me?"
"Holmes." He ceremoniously removed the hood. "Sherlock Holmes."
"There is a creature in Greek mythology called the Hydra. When you cut off its head, two more will grow in its place. You cannot stop this, Sherlock Holmes, you cannot stop the revolution to turn the world into chaos. When you kill the father, the son will rise."
"You said 'family'," Sherlock spat, "you're not a family. I know family - "
"We all have the same values. We all have the same vision for the future. Although the rest of the world may not agree with how we want it to be."
"You mean a world where millions of innocent women and children are enslaved by a network of criminal enterprises? A world where terrorists are free to roam across our borders and target whoever they wish? A world where people like James Moriarty are free to manipulate the media, the government and even the lives of private citizens, who never asked to be involved, their lives devastated and left in ruins - "
Maupertuis raised his voice, "a world where people are free to amuse and abuse themselves as they see fit! With any substance they choose! Where do you think it all comes from? I know an addict when I see one. "
Sherlock shrank back a little as the words hit home. He felt the unwelcome jolt of electricity in his own veins, as they cried out. It was only a little… to help with the pain.
He saw the vials. He saw the cannula in Maupertuis' arm. Then he got himself under control. "For your crimes," he said, evenly, "you will no longer be granted the right to choose your own destiny; you will die tonight."
"One thing," Maupertuis cried out, "allow me one thing."
"A last request?" Sherlock raised one eyebrow under the mop.
"Will you put the record on, uh, over there…"
Sherlock moved over to the cabinet where a small record player sat, already loaded with a vinyl single of Aretha Franklin. He started it and put the needle in the groove.
"Any last words? I can't guarantee I'll remember them, or that anyone will care."
"You may be able to leave here intact Mr Holmes, but I will be avenged, that is for certain. You will not be able to escape. The name Maupertuis will haunt you to your grave."
"Too late," said Sherlock, filling a syringe, "haven't you heard? I'm already dead."
Aretha sang 'Never Let Me Go' and the old man's eyes flickered back into his skull as Sherlock delivered a massive overdose of Morphine into his drip.
All lives end, he reflected, as he checked the old man's pulse, just to be sure.
Back into the rain.
There was no time to add Maupertuis' condition to his observations about the state of human decay. He had taken what he wanted from the house, antibiotics and various pieces of paperwork, and now he would vanish into the forest. In two weeks he would cross the border in the seclusion of the national park and he would be in Kosovo. Shortly after that he would reach Serbia.
There was one last lead to check before he could go home.